Tuesday night in East Lansing, a student with the Twitter handle “hoecus pocus” tweeted a photo that seemingly showed a creepy clown on the Michigan State University campus. Her next tweet acknowledges that she “photoshopped” the clown into the picture, but chaos was reigning on the floor of her dorm already and her Resident Assistant had called police.

And, unfortunately, this trend may not be going away anytime soon, with Halloween just around the corner. Tuesday, it was reported that sales of clown costumes are up 300% over a year ago, so there are probably a lot of clown-wannabes in your neighborhood.

So, some areas are taking a stand. The New Haven Connecticut school district is banning clown costumes and any “symbols of terror” during this year’s Halloween season.

Stephen King, author of It, which featured a creepy clown preying on children and several other horror novels, even took to Twitter this week to suggest that maybe people should “cool” it.

Hey, guys, time to cool the clown hysteria–most of em are good, cheer up the kiddies, make people laugh.